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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 5089817" data-attributes="member: 99">I don't tend to reuse settings much either but I still find it to be useful advice.Our campaigns tend to last between 6 months and a year.  We rotate GMs and when it gets back around to me then I've typically come across some new system or setting that I want to try out.  I'm always flabbergasted when I hear Piratecat talking about the "short", five year 4e game he's got planned.  Our attention span as a group just doesn't match that.It doesn't mean that our games aren't engaging and fun though.  And part of what makes them engaging and fun is that most of the group is interested in the sorts of games that I try to deliver:  Ones where the accumulation of abilities and stuff is fairly secondary to the resolution of problems that exist in the world.  And these problems usually tie into events of importance unfolding in the world.  As the PC's rise in level then their impact on these events tends to be greater and greater.That said, I don't really plot out this web of relationships very clearly at the outset of the campaign.  That's for two reasons:  1) I'm very lazy and 2) I have no idea what the players will really sink their teeth into.  I mean I enjoy a certain amount of worldbuilding just for its own sake.  But once I craft something then I'm eager to see it get used because I probably think it's cool and I think the players will think it's cool.  But you don't want to force it, right?So I tend to plan no more than a couple sessions ahead of the group for the first half of a campaign.  Whatever they appear interested in exploring or dealing with is what I make the game be about, and I focus my creative energies on making whatever that is be as cool as possible.  Much of that is devoted to hurling tons of plot hooks at them, most of which I have only the vaguest idea as to what they would ultimately mean.Eventually they navigate their way among this web of plot hooks to the point that it all starts to take some shape.  That is the tipping point of the campaign where I start to tie stuff back together into something more cohesive and begin planning the ending of the campaign.  The key here is that I'm not starting the game saying, "And at the end, the PC's will fight the BBENecromancer."  What I'm doing is listening to the players when they say, "Whatever else happens, we've got to destroy that BBENecromancer."  And so that's what I make the endgame of the campaign be about.I've had good success with this method in terms of player involvement.  I think it's because they are determining their own goals and choosing adventures that will bring them closer to those goals.  It tends to make the final sessions of a campaign feel like a climax rather than a petering out.  (And I'll thank you to keep your "petering out" jokes to yourself! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />)</blockquote>

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